Hello!
I am running a wordpress site and back it up regularly, once a week. In my case, I run my wordpress page with docker and use [restic](https://restic.net/) on Ubuntu to gently stop my wordpress docker containers, backup the directory with all files, and then start it again. It works great!
However, currently, my backup is growing by 122 MB every week (restic uses deduplication, therefore only the difference is being saved). This is strange, as the site is a rather small static site with little traffic. So I started to wonder if these changes are purely logfiles and cache, or if anything vital changed.
To reduce the storage consumption of my backups, I thought about excluding such unneccesary files, but could not find any comprehensive list, similar to a `.gitignore` of files that can safely be excluded.
Does anyone of you have something like this?
For the record, here is the list of files that changed on my small website, with a total of 122 MB difference. Maybe some of you have some recommendations what could be excluded? Looking at this, I thought about excluding the updraft folder, as it sounds a bit redundant to backup a backup folder 😉
M /home/user/apps/wp-site/wp-site_db_data/ib_buffer_pool
M /home/user/apps/wp-site/wp-site_db_data/ib_logfile0
M /home/user/apps/wp-site/wp-site_db_data/ib_logfile1
M /home/user/apps/wp-site/wp-site_db_data/ibdata1
M /home/user/apps/wp-site/wp-site_db_data/mysql/innodb_index_stats.ibd
M /home/user/apps/wp-site/wp-site_db_data/mysql/innodb_table_stats.ibd
M /home/user/apps/wp-site/wp-site_db_data/wordpress/wp_actionscheduler_actions.ibd
M /home/user/apps/wp-site/wp-site_db_data/wordpress/wp_actionscheduler_claims.ibd
M /home/user/apps/wp-site/wp-site_db_data/wordpress/wp_actionscheduler_logs.ibd
M /home/user/apps/wp-site/wp-site_db_data/wordpress/wp_options.ibd
M /home/user/apps/wp-site/wp-site_db_data/wordpress/wp_postmeta.ibd
M /home/user/apps/wp-site/wp-site_db_data/wordpress/wp_redirection_404.ibd
M /home/user/apps/wp-site/wp-site_db_data/wordpress/wp_redirection_items.ibd
M /home/user/apps/wp-site/wp-site_db_data/wordpress/wp_redirection_logs.ibd
M /home/user/apps/wp-site/wp-site_db_data/wordpress/wp_wpforms_tasks_meta.ibd
+ /home/user/apps/wp-site/wp-site_wordpress_data/wp-content/updraft/backup_2024-06-12-0451_site_2d87fa405953-db.gz
+ /home/user/apps/wp-site/wp-site_wordpress_data/wp-content/updraft/backup_2024-06-12-0451_site_2d87fa405953-others.zip
+ /home/user/apps/wp-site/wp-site_wordpress_data/wp-content/updraft/backup_2024-06-12-0451_site_2d87fa405953-plugins.zip
+ /home/user/apps/wp-site/wp-site_wordpress_data/wp-content/updraft/backup_2024-06-12-0451_site_2d87fa405953-themes.zip
+ /home/user/apps/wp-site/wp-site_wordpress_data/wp-content/updraft/backup_2024-06-12-0451_site_2d87fa405953-uploads.zip
– /home/user/apps/wp-site/wp-site_wordpress_data/wp-content/updraft/backup_2024-06-19-0450_site_cb5515462038-db.gz
– /home/user/apps/wp-site/wp-site_wordpress_data/wp-content/updraft/backup_2024-06-19-0450_site_cb5515462038-others.zip
– /home/user/apps/wp-site/wp-site_wordpress_data/wp-content/updraft/backup_2024-06-19-0450_site_cb5515462038-plugins.zip
– /home/user/apps/wp-site/wp-site_wordpress_data/wp-content/updraft/backup_2024-06-19-0450_site_cb5515462038-themes.zip
– /home/user/apps/wp-site/wp-site_wordpress_data/wp-content/updraft/backup_2024-06-19-0450_site_cb5515462038-uploads.zip
+ /home/user/apps/wp-site/wp-site_wordpress_data/wp-content/updraft/log.2d87fa405953.txt
– /home/user/apps/wp-site/wp-site_wordpress_data/wp-content/updraft/log.cb5515462038.txt
M /home/user/apps/wp-site/wp-site_wordpress_data/wp-content/uploads/wpforms/cache/addons.json
M /home/user/apps/wp-site/wp-site_wordpress_data/wp-content/uploads/wpforms/cache/docs.json
M /home/user/apps/wp-site/wp-site_wordpress_data/wp-content/uploads/wpforms/cache/templates.json
M /home/user/apps/wp-site/wp-site_db_data/ib_buffer_pool
M /home/user/apps/wp-site/wp-site_db_data/ib_logfile0
M /home/user/apps/wp-site/wp-site_db_data/ib_logfile1
M /home/user/apps/wp-site/wp-site_db_data/ibdata1
M /home/user/apps/wp-site/wp-site_db_data/mysql/innodb_index_stats.ibd
M /home/user/apps/wp-site/wp-site_db_data/mysql/innodb_table_stats.ibd
M /home/user/apps/wp-site/wp-site_db_data/wordpress/wp_actionscheduler_actions.ibd
M /home/user/apps/wp-site/wp-site_db_data/wordpress/wp_actionscheduler_claims.ibd
M /home/user/apps/wp-site/wp-site_db_data/wordpress/wp_actionscheduler_logs.ibd
M /home/user/apps/wp-site/wp-site_db_data/wordpress/wp_options.ibd
M /home/user/apps/wp-site/wp-site_db_data/wordpress/wp_postmeta.ibd
M /home/user/apps/wp-site/wp-site_db_data/wordpress/wp_redirection_404.ibd
M /home/user/apps/wp-site/wp-site_db_data/wordpress/wp_redirection_items.ibd
M /home/user/apps/wp-site/wp-site_db_data/wordpress/wp_redirection_logs.ibd
M /home/user/apps/wp-site/wp-site_db_data/wordpress/wp_wpforms_tasks_meta.ibd
+ /home/user/apps/wp-site/wp-site_wordpress_data/wp-content/updraft/backup_2024-06-12-0451_site_2d87fa405953-db.gz
+ /home/user/apps/wp-site/wp-site_wordpress_data/wp-content/updraft/backup_2024-06-12-0451_site_2d87fa405953-others.zip
+ /home/user/apps/wp-site/wp-site_wordpress_data/wp-content/updraft/backup_2024-06-12-0451_site_2d87fa405953-plugins.zip
+ /home/user/apps/wp-site/wp-site_wordpress_data/wp-content/updraft/backup_2024-06-12-0451_site_2d87fa405953-themes.zip
+ /home/user/apps/wp-site/wp-site_wordpress_data/wp-content/updraft/backup_2024-06-12-0451_site_2d87fa405953-uploads.zip
– /home/user/apps/wp-site/wp-site_wordpress_data/wp-content/updraft/backup_2024-06-19-0450_site_cb5515462038-db.gz
– /home/user/apps/wp-site/wp-site_wordpress_data/wp-content/updraft/backup_2024-06-19-0450_site_cb5515462038-others.zip
– /home/user/apps/wp-site/wp-site_wordpress_data/wp-content/updraft/backup_2024-06-19-0450_site_cb5515462038-plugins.zip
– /home/user/apps/wp-site/wp-site_wordpress_data/wp-content/updraft/backup_2024-06-19-0450_site_cb5515462038-themes.zip
– /home/user/apps/wp-site/wp-site_wordpress_data/wp-content/updraft/backup_2024-06-19-0450_site_cb5515462038-uploads.zip
+ /home/user/apps/wp-site/wp-site_wordpress_data/wp-content/updraft/log.2d87fa405953.txt
– /home/user/apps/wp-site/wp-site_wordpress_data/wp-content/updraft/log.cb5515462038.txt
M /home/user/apps/wp-site/wp-site_wordpress_data/wp-content/uploads/wpforms/cache/addons.json
M /home/user/apps/wp-site/wp-site_wordpress_data/wp-content/uploads/wpforms/cache/docs.json
M /home/user/apps/wp-site/wp-site_wordpress_data/wp-content/uploads/wpforms/cache/templates.json
Happy to hear your thoughts!
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You may skip taking backups of backups like updraft . Also for mysql backup using mysqldump is better than raw tables ( create a pre commit hook / manual ) . Cache can also be skipped.
1. Exclude `wp-site_db_data` from your backups and use a backup plugin that dumps your database contents to a .sql file. You are probably already doing that, as your list of files mentions the updraft backup plugin. The directory to exclude contains your MariaDb / MySQL table space files, which you don’t need, and probably will have a hard time restoring. Use the dumped .sql file.
2. Exclude `/wp-content/updraft/` from your backups. That directory contains previous backups. So, each backup contains all your previous backups, which makes no sense.